Some people hate the idea of adding proprietary software to their desktop Linux. For these people, there are Linux distributions such as gNewSense that use only free software. For the rest of us, who use distributions such as Fedora, openSUSE and Ubuntu, there are times we either want to, or feel forced to, add proprietary programs such as Adobe Flash or Skype or the ability to play proprietary audio and video formats such as MP3 or commercial DVDs to your Linux desktop. Here's how to do it.

from consumers perspective, the biggest trouble with media formats is the insanely multifarious codecs. "codecs" may be the foulest of curse words in modern western culture. any day now I expect to hear a top40 humor song named, "a boy named codec".

slight digression: one problem apple has in introducing/leading anything cross platform is that their updater pops up often with half a cd's megabytage of download.